THE NEW YORK TIMES' EMOTIONAL GROUNDWORK FOR TORTURE, EMPIRE, AND PERPETUAL WAR.

Abstract: The New York Times has been unjustly accused of holding back the great neoconservative impulse redefining civilization. This is extremely unfair, as we will demonstrate by studying the context of the editorial "Why are the Pacifists so Passive?" (Chu &Yoo, Feb. 12, 2007).

The New York Times, the "newspaper of record" of the USA (and owner of more than 15 other papers and massively syndicated), gives its voice to Professor John Yoo. Proceeding with stealth, the NYT omits, in its description of Yoo's achievements, his greatest claim to fame. YOO WAS THE FIRST GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL EVER IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF WRITING TO PROCLAIM, AND ENACT TORTURE AS "VALID AND EFFECTIVE". Moreover, Professor Yoo observed that some people, some combative enemies, do not fall in any of the categories foreseen by any treaty or organization for human rights. YOO DISCOVERED THAT SOME ANTHROPOIDS ARE NOT HUMAN IN ANY SENSE. To apply torture to non humans is a non issue. A great American contribution to civilization, very nice.

It helps neoconservatism that the NYT allows Yoo to widely advertise his most recent twisted ideas while avoiding to mention torture. Its prey unawares, the NYT gives Yoo a better chance to ensnare the folks with the righteous ways of old.

In his latest work Yoo impresses on the NYT readership that ANY ALTERNATIVE WOULD BE "FAR WORSE" THAN WAR. Like all great torturers, Yoo kneads souls. Emotional mission accomplished! Learn, naive little liberal Americans, in your apparently naively liberal flagship newspaper, that WAR IS BEST.

It's back to the way the USA was founded, by the PLUTOCRATS of the London company. A plan of invasion, profits, and perpetual war, which FREED the continent. It's now time to FREE the Middle East. Plutocrats, thanks to instruments of propaganda such as the New York Times, torture, and Prof. Yoo, should soon have the busy, robotized populace where they want it: warring around the world, murderously bringing back oil to the American hive, like bees do with honey.

SNEAKY DOES HEARTS ANEW:

If the New York Times had printed an editorial from the late Dr. Mengele, no doubt many would consider that it approved of Mengele's work. Dr. Mengele conducted experiments on incarcerated children, especially twins. After the Nazi defeat many condemned Mengele's activities as torture. As if this were a crucial objection. Yoo's work shows it ain't so.

Imperial supremacists have recently got reacquainted with their Wagnerian selves. Iraq is writhing about in its death throes, on the way to total destruction, AS INTENDED. Mission sort of accomplished! The silly American people pretend they do not understand that was the plan all along, so they can feel good about themselves. But not all the Middle East is yet destroyed. More work needs to be done. More delusions to be planted in the gullible American public.

Editorials from neofascists, just like planted huge factual lies, can suggest and reinforce the emotions inciting to war, empire, and torture. This works better if the nastiness is SURREPTITIOUS. Hopefully, the NYT's average reader noticed nothing suspicious whatsoever, and the sneaky emotions Yoo's editorial conveyed entered their minds, undisturbed, uncontested, and are going to worm through to the inner core of their mental machinery to make them all enraged, frantic and longing to massacre something again, just like last time, and the time before that. The rougher instincts can be easily elicited among the naive, under cover of objectivity, while working for Pluto.

One hundred millions dead Indians confirm that this is how a great civilization is born. The next time the USA invades or bombs still another country, the liberals will feel, once again, that it was the right thing to do, as in 2003.

As the New York Times brings to bear shapers of neocivilization such as John Yoo, the attack against Iran should be close at hand. Let's hope so: the construction of empire can't wait, the moment should be seized before China gets too strong, or something like fatigue comes to spoil the party.

We want fun, fun, fun, not reason: this is America. It's fun to go to a country and shoot at people from helicopters. When big buildings are in the way, especially when nearly as big as the World Trade Center (God bless its soul, peace be upon it!), it's fun to level them in a second, thanks to great American missile technology. Poof! No more big building! How is that for city planning? Shock and awe in Iraq: an "enormous success" which keeps on giving.

NEOCONSERVATISM IS PLEASED TO MEAT YOU:

People know John Yoo's thinking, worldwide. YOO IS TO TORTURE WHAT EINSTEIN WAS TO RELATIVITY. But relativity is relative, whereas torture is absolute: Einstein can't compare.

John Yoo was US deputy assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003, and he is a law professor at UC Berkeley, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (many of whose graduates became members of the Bush administration, fighting for empire, and greenhouse).

Yoo became a world celebrity for his determination, as second at the US Justice Department, of "TORTURE AS VALID AND EFFECTIVE". This was done as officially as possible in a memorandum to the White House. It confirmed, among other things, the legal basis of recruiting dictatorships worldwide in the "extraordinary rendition" program, which OUTSOURCED SOME TORTURE and executions. Outsourcing is the modern way, nobody will contest this. It's only fair that executioners in poor countries be allowed to work. John Yoo's logic is Byzantine enough to lose his critics in thickets of irrelevance. It reminds us of the Nazi Heidegger.

Here is an extract of Yoo's groundbreaking White House torture order:

"TORTURE MAY fall under the International Criminal Court's jurisdiction as a crime against humanity if it is committed as "part of a widespread and systematic attack against any civilian population." Here HOWEVER the interrogation of Al Qaeda operatives is not occurring as part of such an attack. The United States' campaign against al Qaeda is an attack on a non-state terrorist organization, not a civilian population... thus we conclude that the BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S UNDERSTANDING CREATED A VALID AND EFFECTIVE RESERVATION TO THE TORTURE CONVENTION."

In clearer words: there should be no "reservation" about torture. The UN Convention Against Torture was ratified by the US Senate, it's US law, so Professor Yoo, like many a true hero, risks arrest in his effort to advance American civilization in the politically correct neoconservative direction. Fortunately the Masters are here to protect him.

In six pages Professor Yoo sends packing the United Nations Convention Against Torture (1948), the four Geneva Conventions, the UN Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and more.

Compare Professor Yoo's rigor with the degeneracy of the "United Nations Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners" which weakly states that "corporal punishment, punishment by placing in a dark cell, and all cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments shall be completely prohibited..."

"Punishment by dark cell?" Is that for little girls who would cry in the dark, or what?

How could real men be real men, if they cannot take, and give, some serious punishment? Terrorists of the world unite against such a debasement of punishment. Professor Yoo is a new man, a neoconservative, he renews with the authenticity of the full human condition, and this means bringing justice back to full punishment. With Professor Yoo, punishment is something one wants to avoid.

Yoo obliterated seven centuries of weakness with the flesh. The man is a towering figure in history which enshrines the United States of America as the fulcrum of a new civilization.

Think of it. Osama bin Laden wanted to pull US troops out of Saudi Arabia, Hitler wanted to demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan race, Lenin wanted to establish a dictatorship of workers, Mao imposed the modernization of China in five days, Pol Pot did not like cities. All of this is small stuff, conceptually, relative to Yoo's drastic advance. John Yoo invented time travel, and implemented it as official US policy. John Yoo returned to the gilded age of torture in the West, circa 1300 CE.

In the memorandum, Professor Yoo determines that torture can be applied to ANYBODY the US administration calls by CERTAIN NAMES. Such creatures are found to have never existed in the human legal sense. The Inquisition took seven years to try (and execute by roasting) Giordano Bruno for having disrupted God and the harmony of Heavens (1600). If Yoo had been there, presto, off with Giordano!

AMERICAN NEOCONSERVATISM IS SUPERIOR TO NAZISM IN ITS METHODOLOGY OF EXCLUSION:

Carl Schmitt, a jurist at the University of Greifswald, published his essay "Die Diktatur " ("On Dictatorship") in 1921. For Schmitt, a strong dictatorship can embody the will of the people more effectively than any legislative body, as it can be decisive, whereas parliaments inevitably involve discussion and compromise. Schmitt advocated less hypocrisy: “If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.”

Schmitt's reflections were later adopted enthusiastically by Chancellor Hitler, founding the theoretical scaffold of the Nazi State in the name of homeland security. In 1935 Schmitt wrote the Nuremberg laws, which protected the Aryan race against its combative enemies. Who said that a law professor could not be of some weight? CIVILIZATION GETS STEERED BY THEORY BEFORE PRACTICE (the onsets of Athens and the Dark Ages are examples). Chicken Schmitt came before its egg, Hitler. Which egg is Yoo hatching?

The problem of distinguishing human from foe, had been solved in the original English States of America by decreeing that anyone with ANY African inheritance was "black". Non whites could be enslaved (cf. Bible). For centuries, American racial police spent a lot of efforts finding African racial characteristics among whites. If they could be called black, they could be enslaved. Cheaper than fetching them in Africa. Rascism was economical.

The Nazis wanted to be more fair and balanced than that, they did not want to be as inhuman as American racial supremacists. So the Nazis called Aryan anyone with one eight, or less, of non Aryan blood. Even though, this was no perfect: genetical and legal considerations made the Nazi laws prone to dramatic self contradictions when the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" ("Endlösung der Judenfrage") was enacted (as Schmitt pointed out).

In all fairness, we must recognize that Hitler found a partial solution to this problem. The Third Reich had lots of Jewish soldiers, and a lot of crucial people with lots of Jewish "blood". Hitler may have been one himself. He got out of that bind in the way Professor Yoo now advocates and generalizes: Hitler bestowed thousands of such people with APPROPRIATE NAMES. Thus the Marshall leading the invasion of Norway was a 100% Jew, which would have been embarrassing, should this situation have perdured. Hard to explain why a Jew was used by Nazism to lead atrocities against rebellious blond blue eyed Aryans. So Decider Hitler made him and his family "Honorary Aryans" (Ehrenarier; ibidem for the entire Japanese Volk). Dr. Joseph Goebbels explained: "we decide who is Jewish and who is not."

IDENTICALLY, the Bush administration decides who is an "enemy combatant", and who is not. It's nice the Nazis figured a lot of it out earlier, the American people should be more grateful.

It's a testimony to the greatness of American civilization, that Prof. Yoo officially brought Hitler's approach to its final solution, sorting out Schmitt's timid pangs of conscience completely. If Prof. Yoo had been at the Wansee Conference, he could have assuaged Prof. Schmitt that enemy combatants were not of human sort, whatsoever. So whatever happened to them was of no legal concern, whatsoever. This is the meat of Yoo's torture memorandum, and was enacted into law to deny habeas corpus even to US citizens (2007).

Reducing human rights, as the Nazis did, led to dilemmas. Instead biologist Yoo has invented a new species, to whom no human rights apply, whatsoever. It's enough that the "president" pronounces appropriate names. Yoo has sidestepped entirely a question which tortured the Nazis so much.

A really big struggle for civilization has started again, and this time, thanks to Professor Yoo, European civilization may be sent packing, and never be seen again. The Nazis had already found civilization should be put in reverse. By going back to official torture, and the denial of any humanity to "enemy combatant", Prof. Yoo has taken a decisive step backwards, the boldness of which eluded the Nazis, contributing to their downfall. Let me explain.

NOT ENOUGH TORTURE: HOW NAZISM CAME SHORT:

In the Nazi regime, a student may have had the impertinence to expect NOT to be tortured. In Nazi Germany, even the lowest of the low expected minimal standards of civilization and legalism. Inferior races were protected by their special laws, and torture had NOT been recognized as "valid and effective". Thus encouraged by not expecting to be tortured, a student could become bold, unafraid and rebellious. The Secret State Police (GEheime STAatsPOlizei) lost authority at the outset.

This was a very practical problem for the Gestapo, and the Nazi State. A dynamic, modern state cannot have everybody in the secret police, or then the economy goes down (cf. Stalinist states: the Gestapo had only 40,000 employees (for 80 million people), whereas the Stasi had more than 100,000 (for 17 million)). The Nazis needed all the help terror provides with. But how to get compliance without the prospect of really horrible torture? Absent the threat of official torture, German people could get away with dastardly behavior: law enforcement officials, unafraid, occasionally refused to execute innocent civilians (which was legal, so they could not be punished!). If Yoo had advised the Nazis, he would have pointed out, as he did for the USA, that such combative enemies could be viewed as non human, and thus had no legal existence whatsoever.

When the philosopher Hannah Arendt was a student, in Nazi Germany, she made library searches to gather evidence purporting to prove that Nazis were doing bad things. Although a German Jew, she was obviously rebellious and unafraid. The Gestapo arrested her, but, because torture was NOT official Nazi policy, she could not be punished, as she deserved, and, rather meekly, she was just sent packing to Paris. Arendt would keep on poisoning minds for decades, in particular by exposing collaborations between Aryans and subhumans ("Untermenschen").

With such tender, girlie men methods with enemies who fought them, no wonder the Nazis lost the war. We do not want this to happen to the USA. The problem with Nazi torture was that it was NOT official, it was secret and controversial, and thus it did not keep people in line. Prof. Yoo saw this clearly.

TORTURE IS THE FUTURE:

Yoo teaches law, and presumably torture, at the University of California at Berkeley, no doubt bringing, by his mere presence, peace and quiet to this institution, which sorely needed it. This is no small achievement: UC Berkeley, by rioting against the American system, contributed to the American defeat in Vietnam. Now only victory will do, "Decider" Bush decided. Thanks to Prof. Yoo, students know that, should the Federal establishment evoke them in certain ways, with certain words, they may be disappeared without trial, and tortured, without charge.

Presto, no more lucrative law career! Instead a world of pain for them, and no remains. So Prof. Yoo's law students will be calm and scholarly, and learn to make distinctions, especially those serving unquestionably the glory of their plutocratic Masters.

Not that the Masters are not merciful. The safety and well being of students, or the general population, is primordial. Students who disappear may not be necessarily tortured, as Vice (President) Cheney pointed out in his neowisdom. Cheney indicated that the Bush administration DOES NOT REGARD WATER-BOARDING AS TORTURE, and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me", Cheney said (October 2006).

As Vice Cheney, or Yoo, would no doubt point out, water boarding was extensively used in the Middle Ages to determine who was a WITCH, and therefore does not constitute torture. Finding things out is not per se torture (a no brainer). Disjointed limbs, crushed bones or tears from red hot pincers, that's torture (but it's OK, on non human anthropoids). Clearly, to be revived after drowning is not torture, it's life saving, taking care. America is a civilization which takes care. We should all aspire to be revived by Vice Cheney. Imagine the honor.

All right, the general commanding the Iraqi Air Force died under torture. But as Vice, or Yoo, would point out, that was not from water boarding, and, anyway, everybody forgot that story, so let bygones be bygones, instead of being always divisive, and not fun, besides.

The mighty Philip IV of France ("Le Bel") invented the neoconservative mix of modern police methods and scientific torture. The Church had grown in terror and clout, the secular state had to fight back. Philip le Bel (seconded by his English vassal) broke the otherworldly power of the Templar Monks, the Papacy and the Catholic Church. Thus he insured ample tax revenues to the British and French crowns, and crushed the mad-with-God opportunists. It was a struggle against religious fundamentalism, valid, but not nearly effective enough: soon 630 years of continuous religious, civil and nationalistic wars tore the European polity into pieces.

In Yoo's revolutionary society, officials could have called Hannah Arendt an "enemy combatant", and presto, no more Arendt! American professors taught these methods in Chili, Guatemala, and Argentina, with an "enormous success".

The USA was long at the vanguard of neolegalism, neoconservatism, and fascism with a human face. The CIA, at the very least, engineered the coup in Chili against Dr. Allende who had been constitutionally elected president there, because of socialist ideas in his head. Professor Yoo, and the Bush administration, are pursuing conservatively the American tradition of engineering torture and disappearance. Professor Yoo's ground breaking discourse provides an official scaffolding for established American practices, valid and effective.

YOO: CONGRESS DOES NOT WANT NO WAR:

Now that war with Iran looms, how to get the American populace to participate as enthusiastically as in 2003? Well, let's roll out Master Yoo and his kind.

In the New York Times, Yoo concludes: "PERHAPS it was inevitable that the public would SOON TIRE of war and engage in OVERHEATED accusations of BAD FAITH. It is QUITE RIGHT that Congress review, and consider, from its UNIQUE perspective, what changes, IF ANY, it now wants to make. If Congress REALLY BELIEVES the Bush administration has set us on the wrong course, it can act tomorrow to cut the sinews of war in Iraq. But its failure to do so seems an acknowledgment that the consequences would be FAR WORSE THAN WHAT WE FACE NOW."

Yoo diagnoses that some fatigued part of the public confused heat exhaustion on its part with bad faith in others, that Congress is "unique" rather than representative, and that Congress does not necessarily believe in reality. Yoo intimates that Congress acknowledges that the consequences of having no war would be terrible. No reason needs to be given why any of this is so: Yoo knows that US citizens have been trained to goose step behind their leaders, not to contradict them.

Of even greater help to fascism and plutocracy is Yoo's subliminal use of "we", his concept of what he proposes that the public be. Clearly, the American People has no interest to be increasingly hated worldwide, and get mangled and die on the other side of the planet for no discernible reason, now that all old reasons are known to have been lies. Yoo knows this. So, clearly, the "we" Yoo evokes is not "WE" as in "WE THE PEOPLE", as found in the US Constitution (in capital letters). The People-in-the-Constitution pursue 'happiness", not death. But now if "WE" betray war, "we" will "face far worse consequences". It's a new "we". Yoo's "we" is neoconservative, it pursues war, not the socialist happiness the US Constitution (and Aristotle) imposed on us. Yoo implicitly suggests a new concept of national identification, thus a new US Constitution. Who is Yoo's "we"?

"WE", THE PLUTONOMY AND PLUTOCRACY UNITED FOR PERPETUAL WAR:

Before the neoconservatives got going, the price of oil was a measly 10 dollars per barrel, which caused great pain to the oiligarchy. By taking out of the equation Iraq's enormous reserves of oil, the price reached 80 dollars, and will stay high for years to come. Not bad for conservation, and no doubt excellent for the oil billionaires. Iraq now functions as a gigantic strategic petroleum reserve for the USA (but for nukes, oil has the highest energetic density).

The "enormous success in Iraq", maims and kills plenty of Americans, and Iran can be accused of that: the Iraq war has created an opportunity for FURTHER SUCCESS. Iran is the last serious obstacle to total American hegemony in the Middle Earth. One needs just another little bombing campaign. To GIVE WAR A CHANCE, US carrier battle groups will tour Iranian archipelagoes in the Persian Gulf. With a bit of luck, something Iranian will fly into them. Just like the time before, with the Gulf of Tonkin incident: a US destroyer hit by ONE single bullet provided the casus belli for the Vietnam war. True, Vietnam was lost. But because of the anti war movement: "We lost because we quit", said Bush in Vietnam about Vietnam (2006). Now Yoo's sneaky terror is all over Berkeley, the students are like scared cows, no leftist will prevent the victory Decider Bush has called for.

Pluto-nomy means wealth-management. It's Citigroup's observation that "market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper and become a greater share of the economy in the plutonomy countries," ("strategy" updates, 2006). For Citigroup, it does not matter anymore what the non rich do in the plutonomic economy: they are the new serfs, bound to their little desks, cleaning the toilets, harvesting the fields. The plutonomic countries make an ideological military coalition (its core, Australia, UK, USA are all in Iraq, sharing a sauna of blood in a manly ritual). Yoo's "we" is Citigroup's "we", it's "WE THE PLUTOCRACY, WE THE OILIGARCHY, WE THE INDUSTRIAL MILITARY COMPLEX".

Plutonomy is next to PLUTOCRACY. Roman uncontrolled plutonomy during the Punic wars led to plutocracy. It took about three generations (220 to 148 BCE) for the Roman plutocracy to take total control of the SOUL of the Roman Senate, and vanquish the People (Populus Romanus).

Wealth imbalance was the EXACT disease the Gracchi brothers eloquently condemned as destroying the Roman republic and people (~125 BCE). Only young cute females could still marry up, as in India, but that was it. Thereafter Rome was plutocratic for fifteen centuries (in the East).

Wealth leads to ever more wealth, and tends to concentrate, this has been known since prehistoric times. The effect arises from the intrinsic exponential nature of leverage and growth. It's even more true in the modern economy, which leverages human THINKING ever more. Finding a balance between COMMUNIZATION AND GREED has been at the heart of civilization even before Solon's creation of Athenian civilization (~ 595 CE). WW II forced Western oligarchies to be kind to the vast mass of the people. But recently it was found in many countries (Anglo-Saxons, China, etc...) that increased greed accelerated economic growth, and so greed was adopted worldwide in a rush forward, all the more since it advantages the plutocratic Masters more than anybody else.

We are transiting from overwhelming plutonomy to plutocracy. Mercenaries are fighting, elections are bought (officially Bush spent $ 238 million last time; unsupervised private companies counted the votes, and the poor often could not find a "voting" booth). Yoo officialized torture and dehumanization.

If fascism gathers more momentum, we could reintroduce that great American invention, slavery justified by race. Families of disobedient Indians and other colored types were sold in slavery as early as the 17C. Laws against the Chinese long in evidence, there is plenty of legal precedent to rejuvenate the whole thing and march on into the past, neo-conserving. It is prudent that Professor Yoo, an ethnic Chinese, contributes to America's old, mighty and horrific ways. Keeps him on his toes, bringing new-old ideas. If he keeps on being smart, why not making him an honorary Aryan, an EHRENARIER?

In the 18C there were twice more blacks in some American states than whites. This troubling imbalance was corrected in ways Yoo has loudly justified. Prof. Yoo, and his New York Times, judiciously remind us that all the old ways could be reinstituted stealthily. The plutocracy should be thankful. Like Cheney, Yoo should be given lots of money.

Conclusion: SAVAGERY SAVES US:

Plutocracy has a passion for "perpetual war". War not only prevents boredom, war not only installs fascism, the terminal stage of plutocracy, forever, but war also permits the plutocracy to fully express the arts of the most exquisite pleasures, such as picking up anyone, and, after pronouncing certain words, torture them to death. Yesterday Central and South America, today Iraq, tomorrow the world.

"PERPETUAL WAR", is an American judicial order: it was ENACTED by Prof. Yoo's great predecessor, Chief Justice Cooke, the hero of US common law, who designated the past and coming course of the USA (in ... 1609 CE!). "Perpetual war" exterminated the Indians, as ordered. But the enemy is more "adaptive" now, we needed to make torture official.

To master Europe, powerful elements of American plutocracy propelled Nazism, a messy parrot of US neoconservatism. But Nazism was too close to France during its delicate devolution, and it all fizzled out. France loves to battle in the name of "mission civilisatrice". The Franks spread all around Europe, long ago, their European civilization campaign adapting to the crowded continent, with more respect for the commons, diversity, and innovation, and less admiration for the Rich, and the conservative old ways (empire, theocracy, torture, war, and fascism).

Perpetual negotiation is European, perpetual war is how the American West was won. Two ways to handle the universe. Yoo is right: war is indeed something Pluto-democrats want, in the best American tradition, of invasion and destruction. The social influence of a recovering Europe is in the way.

But not all is lost. Plutocrats, such as the NYT's Sulzberger family, promote the authority of many fascists, and the brightest, such as Yoo, have better logic and sensitivity than the Nazis. Professor Yoo's pioneering work erased centuries of theoretical and practical civilization, and is encouraging the American public to pursue a war where new old (neoconservative) ways are permitted. Sensory deprivation and drowning are not torture. Anyway, torture is OK. Bombing millions of Middle Easterners to death to establish American freedom in the Middle East is a "no brainer". Who needs a brain anyway? Let the plutocracy think for you.

Yoo's editorial is typical, inciting the emotional system of the average "liberal" reader of the New York Times to identify with the plutocracy in command, and feel that peace is "far worse" than anything else. Only a master of torture could have seen the truth so plainly. It all fits together.

Some will whine, and say that war is not progress. And then they go and waste a lot of calories, fly and drive everywhere, producing lots of carbon dioxide, the American way. Fortunately for them, US fascism is here to provide them with oil and influence. Let it not be said that the neoconservatives did not take care. Most energy is provided by oil and coal. There are 200 years of reserve of coal, but only 41 of oil (2007). Oil is irreplaceable for transportation. China builds one coal power plant each week; there is no plausible confinement method for CO2.

Absent some considerable, science fiction leap forward in energy technology, and/or a tremendous world war with a nuclear winter, planetary ice will totally melt, resulting in a minimum sea level rise of 70 meters. As the planet heads towards a runaway greenhouse, Venus style, only high ground around the Arctic Sea and Antarctica will be hospitable.

Enjoying the few remaining vegetated areas of that sweltering, mostly desert, overheated planet will be reserved to the surviving rich, preferably American, protected by an advanced version of fascism. The transition, in the coming centuries, to this really New World will inevitably involve lots of torture and mass destruction.

Prof. Yoo, Vice Cheney, Decider Bush and the New York Times are putting together the mental weaponry to face this. We should be grateful. Occupying, torturing and disposing of the Middle East is undeniably a very practical start. One can train to fight in the desert, one can get rid of a lot of insurgents, and one may even slow down the poisoning of the atmosphere, keep that oil in reserve, and Arabs don't like Americans anyway. But, first of all, one can practice the removal from American minds of many encumbering remnants of that European civilization whose pretension has long hindered America's final victory. In America, only victory counts.

After rescuing the theory of torture from many centuries of neglect, and pointing out that little common people matter so little in the US plutonomy that their only audacious hope is to identify with the plutocracy, at least in their little minds, if they want to exist in any sense, Professor Yoo, Vice Cheney and the New York Times should perhaps explore further avenues of research to insure victory.

The Aztecs loved perpetual wars, their "flower wars"; they were not timid. Let's remember, though, that, although war procured lots of good meat, the Aztecs were horrified by torture. Otherwise said, by reintroducing torture, Professor Yoo has done the hardest, the Aztecs would claim, and the New York Times, his MESSENGER should let him write ever more innovative editorials. May be Professor Yoo could remove some reservations in food procurement too, from his unique perspective? Food is not short yet, but that may change. The Bush administration has the revolutionary idea to transform food into oil. This should help with food shortages, giving even more reasons to go to war everywhere green.

Nothing in the Geneva Conventions says that enemy combatants are not biofuel, as Professor Yoo has no doubt noticed, in a "no brainer" extension of his reasoning reintroducing torture to civilization. Maybe the University of California at Berkeley could create a new department of ENEMY COMBATANCY, make Professor Yoo Chair. As enemy combatants from the Perpetual War are processed therein, it could pay for itself.